Nail Polish
by pickamix
Summary: <html><head></head>He has no emotional attachment to Spike but they get along.</html>
1. Nail Polish Guitars

Who knew that werewolves stopped aging several years after first infected and had more vampiric tendencies after that? Oz didn't. No ... mirrors, stakes, garlic, or holy relics were never an issue. But Oz now exclusively ate animals straight from the forests … without cooking them. Any meat that you could buy was processed in some way and that didn't agree with his digestive system. Also, while sunlight is not an issue for werewolves the same way it is for vampires, Oz finds that he's more active at night, and can't seem to change that. Poor Jordy was going to be thirteen for the rest of time.

The whole involuntary shifting while emotional problem hasn't changed, so he sticks with the last … creature … that he expected to. He has no emotional attachment to Spike but they get along and the fucking ain't half bad. They can take out their full strength on each other and not have to worry about it. But when Spike takes up with someone else … Oz could care less and just asks Spike if he had a good time.

"Your nail polish is so chipped it's ugly," Spike comments while Oz picks at his guitar.

"Hmm, and you're still butchering that rhythm," Oz notes as Spike strums his own guitar.

"Gimme another lesson?"

"Repaint my nails?"

"Deal. What do you want to do first?"

"Guitar makes more sense."

"It does. So what am I doing wrong here?" Spike asks as his fingers try to work the strings.

Oz puts his fingers over Spike's and helps him with the motions. His nails really do look like shit, but the feel of skin under his fingers feels too good for him to care about looks at the moment.


	2. Nail Polish on Red Silk

This was becoming a pattern that Spike never expected. True, he always had something of an attraction to the witch. He still remembers her in that sheer pink sweeter with the lilac underneath and how it clung to her and was revealing in just the right amounts to make his mouth water without looking in the least bit slutty or trashy. He knows what started the series of fantasies he had of her over the years and with the clarity of those rare perfect recollections he can see her before him afraid but not so afraid that she'd let him do whatever he wanted to her.

_"Now, now, hold on! I-I'll do your spell for you, and, and, and I'll get you Drusilla back, but, but there will be no bottle-in-face, and there will be no 'having' of any kind with me. Alright?"_

She was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen in that moment and her smell … there was no substitute for it. There were berry type flavors in her scent and some kind of woody smell as well, and neither could be attributed to soap or shampoo and there was not a trace of perfume anywhere near her, so he had to assume it was her. Spike was aware that there was a reason for the choices that Oz made in incense. The strawberry and sandalwood that he burned together were as close of a match for Red's scent as could be achieved.

Oz … things were complicated because of him. Spike and Willow had an amazing carnal attraction that burned them with the amount of passion they put into this affair. But Spike knew that the main reason that Willow lowered herself to be with him had everything to do with his connection to Oz. The wolf was all they ever talked about but it wasn't in a way that made Spike feel unappreciated by Willow. No, this seemed more like they had this wonderful thing in common and talking to each other about it made them beatific.

If it weren't for the stash of toiletries he kept in a locker at the public pool house and breaking in to take long thorough showers after his trysts with the love of Oz's life, he knew that Oz would rip his head off at first sniff.

Willow, as was her custom, was walking him to the pool house now. The night bright with moon and stars and a breeze that brought the musty smells from the neighboring woods to them, making things seem a bit more enchanted than they were. When the wind made a sudden directional change and told him who was near, it was too late. The snarl and explosion of fur, teeth and claws were all Spike could see and for the first time since becoming a vampire, he froze. And even though it was just for a split second, the results were worse then Spike could have predicted.

There was nothing he could do. It hurt more than he had ever experienced before. Spike put a hand to the side of his face that felt like it was on fire only to find that it had been skinned, the eye was missing, and so was the ear. His chest was ripped open, puncturing his lungs, rendering him mute. No air … no words.

Oz in full wolf had pinned Willow to the ground, his saliva dripping on her. Spike worried that there was no way for him to save Willow from a violent death and he tried so hard to get to her before anything irrevocable happened, but was stopped when Willow touched Oz's face and told him that she never stopped loving him.

With a whimper the wolf receded and Oz fell on top of Red, sobbing and clutching at her.

Being relieved that Red was going to be okay, still didn't stop Spike's heart from fragmenting into pieces so tiny it would take the most powerful microscope in the world to see the pieces. Seeing them together, his wolf and his witch, and knowing that there was no room for him with them was the worst pain he had ever known. This pain informed that he was in love with both of them. He thought that was something he should've realized before. That they never hurt him or were mean to him or treated him as less than them had blinded him to the idea that love wasn't what he had always assumed it was.

_"Great love is wild ... and passionate and dangerous. It burns and consumes."_

Passionate, yes … a little bit of danger, true … but the burning and consuming bit, hadn't happened at all. Until now. So maybe he was right after all.

Time flew apparently because Willow and Oz were still locked in an embrace that had made it seem like time had stood still, but Spike could smell the sunrise. It wasn't too far off. Half hour, forty-five minutes tops.

_Oz's nail polish looks better than it usually does when he does it himself. Probably just because he's touching her perfect crimson hair._

Deciding that the oblivion of being dust was more appealing than trying to move on heartbroken again, he closed his good eye and threw himself into painless unconscious darkness.


	3. Chipped Black Polish

The last three days had been the longest of Willow's unnaturally long life. Between periodic spells to help as much as she could with Spike's injuries, and keeping Oz from finding a way to cut off his own head, she had no time to decompress or even identify her own feelings. There was only room for Oz's all-consuming guilt, and experiencing the pain that Spike was in, which didn't leave room for any of her emotions at all. Unless exhaustion was an emotion, which was normally something should would put a lot of thought into, but she just couldn't right now.

Spike had told her what the one room apartment that he and Oz shared looked like, but seeing it was something else. And living in it, maddening. Not a scrap of real furniture to be seen. There were some crates that were rigged to be a table and chairs that had a few liquor bottles and several decks of cards on it but nothing else. It seemed the only other places to sit were the mats on the hard wood floor. Clothes were kept in piles, Oz's clean ones were in one corner, and Spike's in another, dirty clothes were thrown together in a heap of varying shades of black in front of the alcove that contained the smallest washer and drier she had ever seen … ever. There was no stove or even whatever those things were called that replaced microwaves a couple years ago or even an old microwave for that matter. They did have a state of the art player though and several amps and guitars of all kinds kept on stands or hung on the walls.

The bathroom needed to be bombed with bleach … at least a dozen times.

The only art in the entire place was a wall covered in sketches that had been drawn directly on the wall. Each face had a date … the date the person had died. She recognized most of the Scoobies. Tara and Xander and Buffy and Giles and an especially detailed one of Dawn. There were other faces that she still vaguely remembered like Wesley and Fred and Gunn and Angel and another almost Fred looking person. And there were a bunch of faces she didn't know. If she wasn't so dead on her feet and starving, she would have likely been moved to tears by this display, but there was no food of any kind. A couple empty boxes of Weetabix, and a pint of pig's blood that had been fed to Spike that first day, didn't make her less hungry. Besides, there was no leaving Spike and Oz to get food because all the awful things she imagined could happen while she was away even for a half an hour terrified her. And sleep was fitful at best, when she could sleep at all.

Oz was refusing to hunt and no matter how many times Willow told him that his suffering wasn't helping Spike, he still refused to go. Even when she tried to flip that logic around and tell him that he needed to be healthy and not starved, so that when Spike woke up, Oz could be there for him, he refused even still. Her heart bled for him because no matter what she still loved him and it hurt her to see him hurting.

Spike slept on the mattress in the corner with Oz curled around him. The only thing that made staying here bearable to Willow was that the mattress was big enough to fit all three of them. Curling up to Spike's other side, she lay her head on his shoulder mindful of his healing chest wounds. Her hand stroked the almost smooth skin on his cheek and cried at the knowledge that there were some things that vampire healing couldn't take care of and neither could her magic. She still thought he was beautiful, but she worried how he would feel about the drastic change in his appearance. And for the first time since that nightmare happened, the guilt she felt was her own. She should have known that one day Oz was going to find out and that horror would follow. Well she had known but she didn't think it would go down like it did. Her assumption had been that Oz would attack her for sleeping with the love of his life. The way Spike talked about Oz and how they got on, told her everything she needed to know about how Oz felt for Spike.

Her selfishness at wanting Spike so she could have both him and a piece of Oz, left her feeling culpable for any loneliness on Oz's part when she stole Spike away from him, but she was too glutinous to give him up. And that her greediness created a straight line to this … she still couldn't think of a more fitting word than nightmare, even though it was very much a reality … made her feel even more need to find some kind of redemption. Spike's blood was on her hands and so was Oz's feelings of guilt that really belonged only to her. And those were just the latest of a long line of destruction in her wake.

The first person she hurt was Tara. And while in retrospect that wasn't the healthiest of relationships, it didn't excuse what she had done to her. The killing spree was worse and made twice as horrendous since she had done it because of Tara being stolen from her and Tara would have never wanted that legacy. In there was Dawn. And then the backlash of the spell calling all Slayers that had lasted a few decades that she felt responsible for. And since adultery was seemingly her thing … there was the heartbreak she caused Kennedy with that random drunken week with Morgan, who Kennedy called Dick 'n Tits at first affectionately and then later viciously. Then Kennedy hit Morgan so hard that her neck snapped. And while it was Kennedy's fist, Willow knew she was responsible. For so long she stayed alone and the only words she spoke were spells to save people. And when she couldn't get around talking to people no matter how hard she tried.

And then she ran into Spike … and found out about Oz, and she ended up in yet another affair that led to even more violence. So now she needed to do whatever she could to … not fix it because that was impossible … but to rebuild things to the best of her ability. When she had done that … she would leave again, only this time there would be no coming back into the world.

For as much as she believed that suffering was not a virtue … if her loneliness kept people from getting hurt then being a hermit (hermitess?) was the only option.

Whispering the tips of her fingers along Spike's chest wounds, Willow put all the power she could muster into another healing spell. The lightening shot through her hand, up her arm and into her chest and then back and out her fingers ripping away at her health and giving it to him.

The last thing she saw before passing out were fingernails with chipped black polish on them.


	4. Matching Manicures

After having eaten for the first time in days, Oz felt the fog lift from his brain and the realization that he had been self-indulgent by letting his feeling of guilt consume everything steeled his determination to just be better and do right by Spike and Willow.

His fully wolfed violent outburst was likely going to cost him everything, but he wanted to try and put as much back together as possible. He had attacked Spike first because some instinct told him that Spike would've been able to stop him from what blind jealousy had propelled him to do. Then he wanted to play with Willow and make her terrified before biting into her. He resented her for choosing someone else over him, never trying to find him, and then stealing Spike away from him on top of that. The wrath he had felt for her eclipsed any other he had ever felt in his life. And the fountainhead of that hatred was that he loved her, then, still, always.

Cleaning off all the bits of gore that came with dinner, Oz tried to balance being thorough with his need to hurry. He wanted to get back to Spike and Willow who were still unconscious. When he realized that he'd left them, his throat constricted in worry. Then he got back and saw that they were asleep, Willow's head on Spike's shoulder and her hand on his chest. The livid scars on Spike's chest had Oz clenching his jaw, but the sight of Spike's mutilated face brought tears to his eyes. He was never going to forgive himself for having done that to someone he loved and yes he was now willing to see that Spike had wiggled into his heart.

A flash of Willow and Spike walking, hand in hand, smelling of each other's sex, and smiling so broadly at each other while they had an animated conversation, distracted him for a minute with emotions that he really needed to suppress right now. Just that thought started changing him but he was able to breathe through it and put the wolf off.

Leaving the bathroom, Oz's eyes immediately sought them out. From this angle, he couldn't see the result of his jealousy and they simply looked like a happy couple sleeping together. The scent of blood in the air had been so constant since he did what he did that it never occurred to him that there might be something more wrong. But with his renewed energy and clarity, he realized that there was something very not right if the apartment still smelled like fresh blood. Taking a closer look at Willow and Spike, he noticed that the back of Willow's shirt was a different color than the front. Oz turned her onto her back and the blood smeared on Spike's naked chest got absorbed through his skin. Oz could see Spike's pores slurp the slimy substance up. Once his chest was spotless of blood at least, Spike began to start and stir.

Startling Oz, Spike shot into a sitting position, his one eye wide and a panicked look on his face, and said, "Tadpoles!" in such a frightened manner that Oz's instinct was to throw his arms around him. It wasn't until after Spike started to hold Oz back that the memory of who it was that had frog fear came to him. Willow was the one that was afraid of frogs in all form. Why was Spike shaking from a dream about tadpoles?

When Spike began belly laughing, Oz pulled back to look at him. "You okay man?"

"How bloody funny is it that I had a nightmare about tadpoles? I mean, me? That's just barmy, right?" Spike laughed one more time before reality hit him and he touched his face. The rage that Spike hit Oz with then came as no surprise. With a feral growl and movement so fast that not even Oz could track it, Spike had him pinned to the floor and was beating the tar out of him.

The last and first thing he was aware of was the pain. It encompassed his entire body, but the most pronounced pain was his leg. Grasping for his leg left him patting the floor. There was no leg there, just blood in the last phase of drying.

It would suck but all he'd have to do is turn and he'd have a new leg, so he just lay there without doing anything. The sound of Spike's Zippo caught his attention and he twisted his head to look. Willow sat there, cigarette dangling from her lip. "He's never drank your blood before, has he?"

"Ah no."

Willow nodded, took a drag from the cigarette and blew a ribbon of smoke out. "He has now."

"I thought so." Oz tried to sit up so he could have proper eye contact with Willow, but he was in too much pain.

"You should turn and take care of that leg."

Not wasting another moment, he turned. And as he was running through the woods he found that he wasn't the only werewolf there. There were two others. They ran together and played together and ate together and fucked together. He was home. 

* * *

><p>In the morning, Oz woke up in between a naked Willow and Spike just cuddling together in the middle of the forest. Pulling their hands up so he could snuggle his face against them, he couldn't help but notice that somehow they all had perfect matching manicures.<p> 


End file.
